Many attacks on women in Boca-Deerfield area remain unsolved
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Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper:
Many attacks on women in Boca-Deerfield area remain unsolved
By KEVIN KRAUSE Staff Writer
Sep. 13, 1999
In October 1998, detectives from Palm Beach and Broward counties
gathered in
Boca Raton to pore over a string of brutal assaults against young women
during
the last four years that seemed to be related.
The women had been randomly beaten, stabbed, strangled and sexually
assaulted by a knife-wielding man stalking them from the darkness. The
victims
were accosted while either walking their dogs, doing laundry or
returning home
to their apartments in the Boca Raton-Deerfield Beach area.
But since the first documented attack in 1994, none of the cases has
been
solved and only one arrest has been made.
Police have expended hundreds of hours consulting with criminal
profilers,
setting up surveillance and decoys, and canvassing neighborhoods.
The problems facing prosecutors and police in each of the cases is
that the
assaults occurred at night with no witnesses and little physical
evidence.
The lack of progress in the investigations has been frustrating to
law
enforcement and victims alike.
"Criminals get smarter after they get caught a few times. But every
criminal makes a mistake, if you look long and hard enough," said Sgt.
William
Springer, of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. "As long as they
continue
to (commit crimes), you have a better chance."
"We want to pursue the case. I feel like it will give me some
closure," said
Jennifer Feldman, who was wrestled to the ground in 1994 by a
knife-wielding
intruder in her Deerfield Beach apartment.
Feldman said the face of her assailant is etched forever in her
memory.
"I know exactly what he looks like in my mind," Feldman said. "You
don't
forget."
Around the middle of 1998, when the attacks were becoming more
frequent,
detectives fanned out across several apartment complexes to interview
residents.
FBI criminal profilers were consulted several times.
And a female officer with the county Sheriff's Office spent an
evening at
one of the apartment complexes as a decoy, even walking a dog outside
several
times to draw the suspect out.
In the two Boca Raton cases, the victims identified David Michael
Miller as
their assailant. He is scheduled to go to trial in December.
Miller, 45, a once-wealthy ex-con with a history of violence against
women,
is charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder in
connection with
attacks on Tamara Parks in 1997 and Kristin Anderson in 1998.
Miller was the subject of extensive surveillance, according to court
records. Boca Raton police watched him between April and July of 1998,
court
records show.
"We have had no random, vicious attacks on women since David
Miller's
arrest," said Debra Shannon, Boca Raton police spokeswoman.
Since Miller's arrest in January, police in both counties have been
trying
to link him to the numerous other unsolved assaults and murders,
according to
police and court records. However, many victims either couldn't pick
Miller out
of photo lineups or failed to identify him from live lineups, detectives
said.
Miller's court-appointed attorney could not be reached for comment.
According to police and court records, the following are some of the
unsolved cases being studied by detectives from Palm Beach and Broward
counties:
Oct. 5, 1994: Feldman, 22, is followed as she walks back to her
Tivoli Park
apartment complex in Deerfield Beach from the pool area just before
midnight.
She hears a knock at the door. When she opens it, a man rushes in with a
knife,
knocking her down. Feldman's boyfriend struggles with the intruder and
is
wounded. The suspect flees.
Jan. 7, 1997: Tamara Parks, 21, is confronted by a stranger while
leaving
the laundry room at 10:54 p.m. in her Town Harbor apartment complex,
west of
Boca Raton. The man tries to strangle her with a necktie but it snaps
and Parks
escapes.
June 28, 1997: Noelle Culhane, 18, hears her front doorknob rattling
at 3:12
a.m. and then there is a knock at the door of her Boca Raton apartment.
The man
stabs her in the side after she questions who he is.
March 25, 1998: Jessica Sorel, 19, is followed into the elevator of
her
OceanView apartment building in Boca Raton at 1:50 a.m. by a man who
beats her
unconscious.
May 9, 1998: Lynn Forney, 21, a University of Florida sophomore, is
repeatedly stabbed by an intruder at 2:10 a.m., while sleeping in her
parents'
Boca Raton home.
Sept. 22, 1998: Kristin Anderson, 24, returns to her unlocked
apartment
west of Boca Raton after walking her dog at 11:15 p.m. and notices the
front
door ajar. She is struck from behind and knocked down while walking to
her
answering machine. A male intruder stabs her repeatedly with a kitchen
knife.
Oct. 3, 1998: Jan Marie Knott, 47, is stabbed to death in her
Deerfield
Beach home.
Jan. 9, 1999: Jennifer Gentry, 17, returns to her unlocked Deerfield
Beach
apartment at 11:25 p.m. after taking clothes to the laundry room. A male
intruder punches her repeatedly in the face and tries to take her
clothes off.
Jan. 12, 1999: Donna Martin, 53, is found stabbed to death in her
home west
of Boca Raton. Martin is last seen alive the night before at Porterhouse
Bar &
Grill at West Palmetto Park Road, near her home in the Crystal Palm
development. Miller is known to frequent the bar, and the Palm Beach
County
Sheriff's Office publicly names him as a suspect. As of last week, he
has not
been charged in the case.
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